Oxford's unrivaled success comes with challenges

Choreographer Nicole Many watches as students in Oxford Academy's musical production class rehearse for their upcoming Spring Pop Show. The Cypress school is once again one of the top schools in the county. MIGUEL VASCONCELLOS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTEROxford Academy

Register rank: 1

Enrollment: 1,122

API score: 983

API similar schools score: 10

UC/CSU eligible grads: 100 percent

Average SAT: 1,919

AP classes offered: 10

Vocational Ed. enrollment: 341

Music/Arts enrollment: 444

Expulsions/suspensions: 2

Graduation rate: 100

Note: API similar schools score, UC/CSU eligible rate and graduation rate from 2006-07; all other data from 2007-08.

HIGH SCHOOLS

Who's the best: New measures send cluster of schools into list of elite.

CYPRESS - Oxford Academy is more than Orange County’s best public high school - it’s one of the highest-ranked campuses in the nation and is quickly gaining a national reputation for academic excellence.

That’s a double-edged sword, students say, because while the well-deserved recognition makes them proud, the pressure is intense every day, grading curves can be insurmountable and the elitist stigma is tough to shake.

“The competition is so fierce and I’m the average student,” said Oxford senior Christina Magalona, 18, of Anaheim, who will attend Cal State Long Beach this fall to study biochemistry. “The first time I got a B- on a paper, it kind of hit me. I cried and said, ‘Why didn’t I get my A?’ I had to accept that it’s not going to be easy here.”

Oxford Academy, a public junior high and high school in Cypress that admits students through a competitive application process, was ranked the No. 2 high school in the nation last year by U.S. News & World Report magazine and No. 9 by Newsweek magazine.

The 10-year-old school admits top-performing students from across the 33,000-student Anaheim Union High School District entering the seventh, eighth and ninth grades. To ensure a geographically diverse mix, officials guarantee a spot at Oxford for the top 25 children at each of the district’s eight junior high schools.

“We have kids who really struggle here academically,” Oxford Principal Kathy Scott said. “They were the smart kid at their old school, and they get here and realize everyone is smart. They start second-guessing themselves and getting depressed.”

For the students who adapt to Oxford’s rigorous standards, the school offers a rewarding, academically stimulating experience. Extracurricular events and service-oriented activities abound, graduates leave well prepared for college, and the nation’s elite universities are looking increasingly favorably on the school, the principal said.

Still, students say their grades are lower at Oxford than if they had gone to a traditional public high school - and that’s a tough pill to swallow.

“We have three times more things going on here than at other schools, and the environment at Oxford will help us excel in college, but a lot of students feel robbed about what colleges they got into,” said student body President Michael Habashi, 18, who will attend Duke University this fall to study English. “But I really think we ended up where we should be.”

Nestled in the heart of Cypress, Oxford sits on a grassy, flat campus about a block from City Hall. The school consists of a collection of mostly one-story buildings that converge on an outdoor quad. The interior hallways of the school are lined with student photography, and a large, painted mural on the school’s administration building proudly proclaims Oxford’s name.

Oxford maintains tough academic standards. All students, for example, must be enrolled in a college-level Advanced Placement English class in their junior and senior years. To remain at Oxford, freshmen and sophomores must maintain at least a 2.7 GPA; for juniors and seniors, it’s a minimum 3.0 GPA.

Teachers and administrators say they offer as many support mechanisms as they can, but with so many top-performing students, they acknowledge it can sometimes be a challenge.

“We have eighth-graders in trigonometry, ninth-graders in Calculus BC,” said Oxford math teacher Ricardo Viramontes, who has been at the school for eight years. “There’s assistance here, but a lot of kids struggle.”

Oxford requires all students to enroll in one of two exploratory career pathways. The biotechnology and medical pathway exposes students to health-related fields, from sports medicine to advanced lab sciences, and will include an internship next fall with UC Irvine Medical Center’s urology department or the Aquarium of the Pacific’s veterinary services department, the principal said.

The business pathway, meanwhile, teaches students about administration, accounting and marketing and culminates with a capstone course, Virtual Enterprise, in which students establish and run a small, imaginary business.

“It allows them to specialize a little bit and do things they wouldn’t normally do,” said business teacher Mike Rylaarsdam, who has been at the school three years and previously worked in finance and business planning in the private sector. “It’s more real life that just reading out of a book.”

Choreographer Nicole Many watches as students in Oxford Academy's musical production class rehearse for their upcoming Spring Pop Show. The Cypress school is once again one of the top schools in the county. MIGUEL VASCONCELLOS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Oxford Academy Seniors give their senior portfolio presentations recently. The portfolio is a culminating event for seniors in which they show some of their best work and reflect on their experience attending Oxford. MIGUEL VASCONCELLOS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Oxford Academy senior Jessica Avila presents her senior portfolio. The presentation the school is a culminating event for seniors in which they show some of their best work and reflect on their experience attending Oxford. MIGUEL VASCONCELLOS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Oxford Academy senior Jessica Avila presents her senior portfolio to Mark Scott. MIGUEL VASCONCELLOS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Students and staff play a game of basketball during one of the seniors vs. staff games at Oxford Academy in Cypress. MIGUEL VASCONCELLOS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Students and staff play a game of basketball at Oxford Academy in Cypress. Oxford Academy in Cypress is again one of the top schools in the county. MIGUEL VASCONCELLOS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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